Wallace: No change without consequences

“There could be no change with­out con­se­quences. Some peo­ple want to sup­port our stance but are un­will­ing to ac­cept the con­se­quences.”

This was the state­ment yes­ter­day from oust­ed T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent William Wal­lace, who is lead­ing a dar­ing bat­tle against the world gov­ern­ing body for foot­ball FI­FA, for the right to man­age the lo­cal game once more.

The team of Wal­lace, Clynt Tay­lor, Joseph Sam Phillip and Su­san Joseph-War­rick was re­placed by a FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the FI­FA be­cause the TTFA faced a re­al risk of in­sol­ven­cy.

T&T foot­ball is now be­ing man­aged by that nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, com­pris­ing busi­ness­man Robert Hadad, the chair­man, re­tired banker Nigel Ro­mano and at­tor­ney Judy Daniel, af­ter Wal­lace and his ex­ec­u­tive was re­moved from of­fice on March 17 by FI­FA, ac­cord­ing to ar­ti­cle 8.2 of its statutes.

Wal­lace, who on Mon­day took their bat­tle with the FI­FA to the High Court in Port-of-Spain, took a swipe at their de­trac­tors yes­ter­day, say­ing the no­tion of tak­ing a stand with­out risk is con­tra­dic­to­ry.

“They are bas­ing this on what might hap­pen, as­sum­ing that we will be banned for our stance. We are tak­ing a cal­cu­lat­ed risk and we are get­ting the sup­port of the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia,” Wal­lace said.

He added: “Right now our foot­ball needs to re­set. For the past four years, our foot­ball had been go­ing back­wards, yet no one stood up and said any­thing but us (the Unit­ed TTFA). Now they are telling me about where we are go­ing wrong. This is not a de­ci­sion that was made just so, we con­sid­ered sev­er­al fac­tors be­fore we ar­rived at this.”

Mean­while, Stern John, a T&T Un­der-20 as­sis­tant coach, is call­ing on Wal­lace and his team to do the right thing.

“This is tak­ing T&T foot­ball back to the stone age and I can­not sup­port that. At the end of the day, foot­ball must be the win­ner. It must not be de­stroyed at the ex­pense of some­one prov­ing a per­son­al point,” John told Guardian Me­dia Sports.

He said be­lieves with the ap­proach be­ing tak­en, sev­er­al young T&T foot­ballers will suf­fer.

“I have a son who wants to rep­re­sent this coun­try but if we are banned, he may nev­er get the chance, just as many oth­er young play­ers. I think Wal­lace has got­ten it wrong here,” John, the coun­try's all-time top goalscor­er, ex­plained.

The Wal­lace team's de­ci­sion to take the FI­FA to the lo­cal court is a vi­o­la­tion of the FI­FA Statutes for Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions, an ac­tion that leads to a ban. How­ev­er, it is un­cer­tain which ban FI­FA could hand down, as one of­fi­cial said, “The coun­try, on the whole, could be banned, or there could be a ban on in­di­vid­u­als. This de­ci­sion will be made at the FI­FA Con­gress and that is if the FI­FA de­cides to ban us for the stand we took.”